I recently made a post about understanding the fee structure and flow of sats on Stacker News for completing various actions. Most of what I posted was accurate but I got some very important things wrong. After some excellent feedback from k00b and other trusted stackers, here is my updated understanding of the stacker news fee structure along with some nice visuals.
I hope this help you to better understand where the sats come from and where they go each and every time you post, comment, zap, and boost.
I have screenshots below but I also made this interactive Stacker News SatFlow diagram so you can look at individual flows yourself by hovering and clicking on the chart.

Pay To Post

In order to keep spam and low-quality posts to a minimum, Stacker News has implemented a cost to post. These Pay-To-Post fees in each territory are set by the founder.
Pay To Post fees are split 70/30 between the territory founder and the rewards pool.

Pay To Comment

Pay to Comment works just the same way as pay to post. You have to pay a small fee to prevent spam and low-quality commenting. This is also split 70/30 between the territory founders and the rewards pool.
It seems that most territories cost 1 sat to comment if you are logged in and 100x that when you comment anonymously.

Boost

Boosting is a way for anyone to boost their post or comment towards the top of a teritory for a limited time. Whichever posts and comments pay the most will be boosted to the top of the territory. The highest boost across the entire site is also boosted on the home page.
In this example, Alice, Bob, and Carol all boost in some territories.
  • Alice's post would boost to the top in ~Bitcoin
  • Bob's post would boost to the top in ~memes
  • Carol's post would boost to the top in ~Bitcoin_Beginners AND on the home page.
Even if a post is not boosted to the top of a territory, it still increases its ranking in the territory. In the example above, Alice's post would still boost in ~memes but Bob's post is boosted to the top.
Boost fees are split 70/30 between territory founders and the rewards pool.

Zaps

When someone zaps a post or comment, the OP receives 70% of those sats, 21% go to the territory founder, and 9% go to the rewards pool. The more high-value posts and comments you make, the more sats you are likely to stack.

Rewards Pool

The rewards pool is paid out daily at midnight in Austin, Texas ๐Ÿค  ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ
80% of the rewards pool is distributed amongst top stackers for the day, 10% go to daily referral rewards, and 10% go to lifetime referral rewards.
I hope this helps everyone to better understand the fees on stacker news and where the sats flow each and every time we do something on here.
If any of this is incomplete or inaccurate, please let me know in the comments so I can make the necessary changes.
These diagrams above are based on percentages while this image is based on the amount of sats for a post.
  • Pay 100 sats to post
  • 10 comments for 10 sats each
  • 1000 sats zapped
  • 1 boost for 10k sats
This shows just how powerful a boost can be for territory owners as well as the rewards pool.
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Good job. The visuals are really neat.
For some of the top stackers (@saloon, @sn, and @anon), the rewards and zaps they receive go into the reward pool directly.
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That's cool that they automatically donate to the pool. I like the auto-forward feature.
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I believe so. The first two are SN accounts and I know sats received by anon go into rewards.
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Really, as they say pictures are worth a thousand words. Great job! It sure makes things clear. Thanks.
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I totally agree. I was having trouble understanding the fees until I did the research and made the graphics.
I am a visual learner so I really made the diagrams to help myself. As soon as I was done, I figured that others might also benefit.
It seems like I was not alone.
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Great summary, exactly the type of content we need!
We all should be all in on SN now and well through the other end of the transition on the 5th :-)
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Glad you enjoyed it. I appreciate the feedback.
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The incoming adoption wave combined with the collapsing structures of the West will be wild, and full of great opportunities as well!
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Yeah, we are all gonna be over here zapping each other to buy groceries while the rest of the world continues to fall from grace.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 19 Oct
I think thatโ€™s true!
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Hehe, maybe!
But I also think most in here have a good shot at building something profitable through this, especially since the largest adoption wave often is all about implementing and propagating.
Thinking along these lines right now, maybe I should set up an agency again... But that would have to be very different in so many ways than what I did inside the failing states of Europistan! ;-)
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Yes, I hope we can all make something profitable on here. That would be amazing.
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Using SN as a base, yes!
But real earnings has to come from outside, simply onboarding local businesses should be doable for most :-)
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I think we will seriously challenge Reddit within a decade. As bitcoin moons, so too will SN traffic, users, and territories.
Great visuals. I learn better with pictures. Thank you for making these.
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Thanks for the feedback. I hope they help lots of people to better understand the stacker news fees and rewards pool.
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Awesome work, yet again.
The boost redesign was a pretty cool change.
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๐Ÿ™
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Maybe "Understanding Stacker News Rewards" is next???
I guess that's kinda what this is already lol
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Yeah, I still don't fully understand how the rewards pool works but hopefully it becomes more clear to me over time.
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I love the visuals, great work here. Keep it up! How do you think things evolve from here?
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I think SN has produced a system that incentivizes people to behave in a way that upholds a certain standard of quality posts.
As long as we are preventing spam with fees, I think the fee structure is excellent.
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Yeah I tend it agree! Itโ€™s a great space and I hope it continues to grow in value and users!
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Very interesting.
Will be the same after Nov 5?
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Thanks for the feedback.
The change on Nov 5th should have absolutely no impact on the fee structure.
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Thanks!
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